Wednesday, August 29, 2012

New Release: Witt, "Lincoln's Code"

In the fateful closing days of 1862, three weeks before
Emancipation, the administration of Abraham Lincoln commissioned a code
setting forth the laws of war for the armies of the United States. The
code announced standards of civilized conduct in wartime concerning
issues such as torture, prisoners of war, civilians, spies, and slaves.
The code Lincoln approved ultimately shaped the course of the Civil War.
And when the war was over, the same code reshaped warfare the world
over. By the twentieth century, the 157 articles of Lincoln’s code had
become the basis of a new international law of war. European powers
adopted the American code. International agreements like the Geneva
Conventions incorporated and expanded it.

In this pathbreaking
and deeply original book, John Fabian Witt tells the hidden story of the
laws of war in the first century of the United States–and of the
extraordinary code that emerged from it to change the course of world
history. Lincoln’s Code is the haunting and inspiring story of an
idea in American history: the idea that conduct in war can be regulated
by law. For many, the very idea of a law for war has seemed like an
oxymoron. But with sweep and vitality, Witt unfolds the story of the
cast of characters who invented the modern laws of war. Washington,
Jefferson, and Franklin championed Enlightenment rules for civilized
warfare.

James Madison went to war in 1812 to vindicate them.
Indian conflicts challenged and distorted them. The Mexican War quietly
revolutionized them. In the Civil War, Lincoln and a small band of now
forgotten figures helped remake those same laws to support Emancipation
and advance the Union war effort. Three decades later, a new generation
of Americans went into a war of American empire in the Philippines
equipped with the very rules Lincoln had laid down.

In
beautifully crafted prose, Witt brings to life the soldiers and the
presidents, the war makers and the pacifists, the Indians and the
slaves, the cynics, the utopians, and the pragmatists who struggled with
enemies and with one another to shape the United States’ vision of the
laws of war. A narrative of expansive range and significance, Lincoln’s Code depicts
the drama of armed conflict and the anguish of human beings grappling
with such vexing questions as whether prisoners could be executed;
whether there were rules in Indian wars; whether military commissions
could try unlawful combatants; whether torture might ever be justified;
and whether slaves could be freed in wartime. The code Lincoln issued
prohibited cruelty and the infliction of pain for its own sake but left
room for vast destruction in the name of a just cause. It condoned the
devastation inflicted in Sherman’s march to the sea. Yet it also
provided a moral foundation for Emancipation and insisted that doing the
right thing in situations of grave crisis was indispensable to the
legitimacy of modern armies.

Witt’s engrossing exploration of
the dilemmas at the heart of the laws of war is a prehistory of our own
era. Today the world once again confronts raging legal and moral
controversy over the conduct of war. Lincoln’s Code reveals that
the controversies of the twenty-first century have roots going back to
the beginnings of American history. In a time of heated controversy
about the nation’s conduct in wartime, Lincoln’s Code is a compelling story of ideals under pressure and a landmark contribution to our understanding of the American experience.

“As bitter disputes still fester about how far
Americans should submit to international legal rules, John Fabian Witt
offers a dispassionate historical perspective and an insightful truth.
From the beginning, Witt shows, America has proclaimed moral rules and
deployed military force, no more paradoxically in combination than
during our Civil War, in which Francis Lieber first codified the law of
war for the world. Witt's book is deeply researched and beautifully
written: an indispensable masterpiece for anyone who cares about how
America's past bears on our present and future.”

-- Samuel Moyn, Columbia University

“If there was ever a time for this book, it
is now. As the war on terror continues unabated and controversy
continues over the use of military commissions, detention,
interrogation, due process and civil liberties, this extraordinary and
well written account about the laws of war in America is a primer and
road map for our citizens and those who are, or should be, trying to
comprehend and prepare the legal and military processes for all present
and future.”